Chapter 1.  Introducing DevOps

Change is the only constant in life is something I have been hearing since I was a child. I never understood the saying; school remained the same, the curriculum was the same for years, home was the same, and friends were the same. However, once I joined my first software company, it immediately struck me that yes, Change is the only constant! Change is inevitable for any product or service, and this is amplified many times over when related to a software product, system, or service.

Software development is a complex undertaking comprising multiple processes and tools, and involves people from different departments. They all need to come together and work in a cohesive manner. With so much variability, the risks are high when delivering to the end customer. One small omission or misconfiguration and the application might come crashing down. This book is about adopting and implementing practices that reduce this risk considerably and ensure that high-quality software can be delivered to the customer again and again. This chapter is about explaining how DevOps brings people, processes, culture, and technology together to deliver software services to the customer effectively and efficiently. It is focused on the theory and concepts of DevOps. The remaining chapters will focus on realizing these concepts through practical examples using Microsoft Windows 2016 and Visual Studio Team Services.

This chapter will answer the following questions:

• What is DevOps?
• Why is DevOps needed?
• What problems are resolved by DevOps?
• What are its constituents, principles, and practices?

Before we get into the details of DevOps itself, let's understand some of the problems software companies face that are addressed by DevOps.